


busywork

by lobotomycastiel



Series: RhodeyTony College AU [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: College AU, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobotomycastiel/pseuds/lobotomycastiel
Summary: Two snippets from Tony and Rhodey's first year in an apartment together.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark
Series: RhodeyTony College AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944418
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	busywork

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello! Sorry for being MIA for a month, my 2nd year of college has been WILD thus far. I should be posting more often now that I've got an established routine.

Rhodey’s trying to catch up on the mountain of assignments for this  _ stupid circuits for non-majors class,  _ that he shouldn’t even have to take, but he’s stuck in because of the stupid  _ standardized requirements,  _ when Tony bursts into his bedroom of their apartment in tears.

This is a frighteningly normal occurrence, so Rhodey just waits patiently, still focusing on his work, until Tony flops down onto his bed and asks him, “Should I switch my major?” 

He turns to his boyfriend and gives him a ‘what the fuck are you on about’ look, which honestly should make his opinion known. Tony _ loves _ electrical bullshit, for whatever reason, and as a bonus, he’s actually good at the thing that he likes. Circuits have always given Rhodey the heebie-jeebies, though. Even in the class he’s in now, which he’s affectionately nicknamed “Spicy Legos,” there are way too many wires. Not to mention the non-zero chance that he’ll get electrocuted. Nah, he’ll stick with his rockets, heat transfer equations, and pipe dream of working at NASA. 

Usually, Tony’s confidence and bluster rebounds after a quick reality check and a sleeve of Thin Mints. However, he still looks upset, which means that telling him that he’s not thinking straight isn’t exactly gonna cut it this time. Time for an actual talk. 

“Who told you that?”

“My advisor! Can you believe it? I told him that I wanted to go for a minor in physics, and he said that--” Tony takes in a deep breath, trying to calm himself down before he continues, “--that I should transfer to BU and get a business degree because my grade in Cryogenics is awful right now, but--” 

Here, Rhodey cuts him off, “Why are you taking Cryogenics? That’s the one where the professor doesn’t let you know your grade until the literal last day of the semester! And the one where the pass rate is like, 17% ‘cause everyone withdraws before he puts the curve in.” 

“That’s what I told my advisor! He didn’t listen to me!” 

“What a dick. But why did  _ you _ sign up for a hell class?”

  
“The course description mentioned superconductors.” Of course it did. Tony’s newest ‘thing’ was superconductors. Rhodey eyes the two tanks of liquid nitrogen underneath their dining room table and prays that he doesn’t wake up one morning to see Tony taking apart the novelty magnets on their shared fridge for an experiment. 

Tony takes his silence as an opportunity to complain a little more. “Here’s the thing, we haven’t even covered those yet, we’re on insulation, and it’s so  _ boring _ , ugh, and we have to do a  _ paper _ and there’s a  _ symposium _ at the end of the semester, like I’m not even going into academia, I’m gonna do industry--”

Rhodey perks up at the mention of his favorite topic. “Wait, you guys get to learn about insulation?” Maybe  _ he _ should take Cryogenics, horrible professor be damned. 

“Ew, I forgot that you’re one of those weirdos that actually liked Thermo.” 

Rhodey gets up from his desk, abandoning all thoughts of getting his homework done (fuck professional writing, it’s a stupid filler class), grabs his pillow off his bed, and chucks it at Tony’s stupid face. Tony catches it and tosses it back at him, and Rhodey ducks, letting it hit the wall and fall back onto the mattress.

“You’re so mean to  _ meeeeee _ , why are we dating?” Tony whines, flopping down onto the bed and looking at Rhodey like a kicked puppy. 

“Because I buy you cheese fries from the diner and let you use my car to get to your lab on the other side of campus, next question.” Rhodey jumps into the bed on top of him, making Tony squeak and laugh a little as they scramble into a more comfortable cuddling position, with Tony lying on top of Rhodey’s chest. 

“I’ll never forgive you for showing me that diner, I’m gonna end up blowing all of my textbook money on their challah loaves and it’ll be your fault that I failed all of my classes.” 

Rhodey pokes Tony’s nose. “That seems like a personal problem.” 

They settle into their usual banter, rambling aimlessly about nothing. Rhodey tells Tony about his machine lab, and how he got to use a drill press for the first time this week, and Tony tells Rhodey about how he nearly burned himself on a soldering iron and how nobody in his coding class showers. They’re silent for a bit, until Tony brings up their original conversation again. 

“But really, should I get a business degree?” Tony looks at him with big, watery brown eyes, and Rhodey’s never been too proud to admit that the kicked-puppy look works on him. 

“If you switch to business, our relationship is over. I can’t associate with you if you turn into someone who wears polo shirts and brags about being on the  _ varsity sailing team _ .” 

That makes Tony break into hysterical peals of laughter. Rhodey doesn’t even think it was that funny, but he’s laughing too. They’re so loud that they barely hear the lock on the other bedroom in the apartment clicking open. That’d be their other roommate, Tiberius Stone. They both kind of hate him, and they’re definitely not renewing the lease with him next year.

“Can you two keep it down?”

He and Tony both try to calm down, and he’s pretty sure that they manage to get out a “yeah, sure, sorry for bothering you,” which has the effect of making Ty roll his eyes and leave. 

When they both  _ finally _ stop laughing, Tony looks him dead in the eyes and says “You know what? That’s fair.” 

***

It’s 2:43 AM at an apartment complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tony Stark has decided that he’s going to kill the people who designed the American Society for Testing Materials website. 

He’s only up this late because Tiberius is “out of town,” or, more accurately, out of the country with his family. Something about a ‘yearly trip to Switzerland,” and “seeing the Alps in the  _ Autumn, _ when they’re the most beautiful.” 

_ What a loser _ , Tony thinks to himself as he quietly loses his mind over the fact that there apparently exists an entire subcommittee dedicated to the safety and quality assurance of bunk beds. Tonight has been a waking nightmare and he desperately wants it to end.

After fiddling for an hour trying to get MIT’s crappy school-issue VPN to work, he’s  _ finally _ managed to get access to the subscription to the journals that he needs for this horrible assignment for a class that he  _ shouldn’t even have to take, goddamnit, he went to boarding school, he knows how to write a paper _ . He’s now elbow-deep in the ASTM Standards catalog, looking fruitlessly for anything related to spring mattresses. 

Six minutes later, his roommate and lovely boyfriend, James Rhodes, walks into their shared apartment. He hears Rhodey’s keys clatter as he sets them down and takes off his shoes before going to the kitchen to grab an extremely late dinner. 

“Your PI still working you to death?” Tony asks, desperate for a distraction from reading…  _ what the fuck is he reading again?  _ F1566-14, “Standard Test Methods for Evaluation of Innersprings, Boxsprings, Mattresses or Mattress Sets,” fascinating.

“Actually, it wasn’t my PI this time, it was the grad student. You remember me telling you about Bradley?” 

“The power-tripping idiot that hates you because you got an internship at NASA and he didn’t?” 

“Yep! Apparently,  _ all _ of my data for the wind shear project was messed up, and I had to stay late to rerun the tests or we’d fall behind schedule. Nevermind that we’ve been behind schedule for weeks now because he’s such a slow writer.” 

Tony rolls his eyes. What a dickhead. “You should report him to the department.” 

Rhodey grins at him, knowingly. “But then I wouldn’t get to see his face when the PI gives me authorship credit on the paper.”  _ What? When did that happen? _

“You’re getting authorship credit? That’s so… you’re amazing, you know that, right?” 

Rhodey rolls his eyes at him fondly as he heats up some leftover pizza. “Duh. What are  _ you _ working on, it’s super late. Don’t tell me you’re actually procrastinating, you’re too smart for that.” 

Tony groans. He’d hoped to forget about what he was working on and just eat pizza and hear about all the cool stuff that Rhodey’s doing. “Remember when you took Intro to Tech Communications last semester?” 

Rhodey nods, “That class was easy, it was just busywork, what are you complaining about?”

“It’s the first big paper, the one on failure analysis. Well, one of the smaller assignments for it, anyways.” 

The microwave dings, so Rhodey extracts his now-hot pizza and makes his way to the couch with Tony, bringing two cans of hard lemonade with him. 

“Lemme see,” he says, grabbing Tony’s laptop with one hand and taking a bite of his dinner with the other. “Oh, I remember this bullshit. My professor didn’t even make us do it, he was even more done with the class than I was.” 

Tony sighs, hefting his legs onto the couch and propping himself up on a pillow. “You’re so lucky. I haven’t even talked to my professor directly, the course is managed by the TA, and he’s so pretentious. If I get a B in  _ tech writing _ , I’m suing the school.”

Rhodey laughs at him, the  _ asshole _ , why are they dating again? “Define pretentious.” 

“He thinks this is an… an English class!”

“Hey genius, it  _ is _ an English class.”

“This TA doesn’t even  _ go here _ , I looked him up, he went to  _ Harvard _ for undergrad and majored in ‘classics,’ whatever that means. He doesn’t know anything about how a failure analysis paper is supposed to look, I could start making stuff up and he wouldn’t know.”

Rhodey gives him a blank, unimpressed stare. “So do it. Make stuff up.” 

Tony falters. Well, he said he  _ could _ make stuff up, not that he  _ would _ . “I don’t wanna, uh, get sent to the Dean for academic dishonesty?” 

Rhodey ruffles his hair. “I think you care way too much about this class and the TA’s approval and that’s why you’re frustrated. Not because the assignment is dumb.” 

“Today’s not the second or fourth Thursday of the month and you’re not my therapist.” Not his best joke, but he’s tired. Rhodey will understand if his quality of humor is severely degraded. 

With that, he grabs his laptop back from Rhodey and scrolls through the page, scanning for any important diagrams he might need for his paper. He finds a few, but he’s mostly interested in the actual description of the tests that get run, so he makes a quick note of those on a sticky note, and slams his laptop shut for the night. 

“I’m going to sleep, and I’m  _ definitely _ skipping my 8:30 Heat Transfer lecture tomorrow. Can you text me the notes after you get to yours?” 

Rhodey turns on the TV to watch his cooking show reruns, the dork. “Of course I will, now go get some sleep. And stop taking your tech writing class so seriously, the TA went to  _ Harvard _ .”

Tony laughs, and turns to his bedroom to finally get a full night's sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are ALWAYS appreciated. Find me on tumblr at [@theotherwasdeath](https://theotherwasdeath.tumblr.com)!


End file.
